


Bang It Home

by vaguelyfamiliar



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: 2015 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championships, Blow Jobs, Communication in Bed, Humiliation (if you squint), Light Dom/sub, M/M, Nipple Play, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn Without Much Plot would be more accurate, Riding, Sexual Experimentation, Somewhat Unsafe Sex, Teasing, Topping from the Bottom, Under-negotiated Kink, blindfolding, even an unusual variation on "Just The Tip", one might say "hardly negotiated at all"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-02-26 15:38:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18720016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguelyfamiliar/pseuds/vaguelyfamiliar
Summary: “How could I be doing sex wrong?” Sid asks, shrugging. “You just get in her and bang it home, right?”





	1. Bang It Home

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a gift that I wrote. For myself. Yesterday I saw a post that someone once tagged their fic with “I wrote this for me but y’all can read it if you want” and I was like, me! And then it turned out to be a Monsters, Inc. fic, but like, go off I guess. Anyway— 
> 
> I don’t want to overexplain my work before anyone even reads it, but just note the tags and proceed with caution if you’re very easily squicked! Spoilery warnings in end notes if you’re cautious about these things. 
> 
> With that, here’s the standard reminder that this is a work of total fiction, nothing within it is true unless it’s publicly available information about public figures, and if you or someone close to you is heavily connected to the NHL or the players mentioned in the tags, hit that back button!
> 
> Lastly, big thanks to S for all of the edit suggestions and cheerleading!!!
> 
> Edit: Just this first chapter is a complete work by itself, but I've now added a tiny addendum/extra as a Chapter 2!

When the dust settles on the gold medal game of Worlds, Canada’s given Russia a good thrashing to claim undefeated victory in the tournament and Claude has been named the Player of the Game, for which he receives a fancy watch and not much other recognition. They first hand the tournament trophy to Sid, who passes it off pretty quickly considering he just made history as the first ever Triple Gold Captain, but that’s Sid. Claude’s learning, try as he might to pay no attention.

The trophy makes its way around to Claude sooner or later. It’s impossible to even skate around with it on a victory lap because there’s so much confetti on the ice, so he just holds it up and pretends to pour confetti into his mouth like champagne while Duchy and Segs snicker. This victory can’t hold a candle to what it must feel like to win a Stanley Cup or an Olympic medal, but it’s his. It’s theirs.

Everyone’s already pretty tipsy when they eventually head out to the bars as a group. They make a scene, twenty-some massive athletes with gold medals looped around each of their necks. A few of the guys didn’t come, the ones who’ve got kids in the country and all that. Normally, Claude would be holed up with Coots and Schenner, but they’ve commandeered the one pool table in all of the cavernous beer hall they’ve ended up at, and Claude’s not much for hanging around watching games when he’d rather be playing. Instead, he’s tucked into a booth with a rag-tag assortment of guys, lured there by Segs, who promised the first round was on him. It’s not technically the first round, considering how much booze they’ve already downed in the locker room, but any excuse to keep drinking.

Claude looks around at their faces: Segs, then Eakin, who still looks sweaty and red despite having showered. Next to him is Toffoli, staring into the distance with a hand under his chin like the physical embodiment of exactly how Claude feels about this cast of characters, and the kid Ekblad is on his other side. And then there’s Sid, posted up at the opposite end of the round booth next to Ekblad like his personal babysitter. It’s hilariously see-through, the way Sid hovers around the youngest to try to make sure they’re having a good time. It never really works; he comes off like a dad chaperoning a middle school dance.

Anyway, they’re a motley crew indeed. If this were any other scenario Claude would resign himself to being bored stiff for the next twenty minutes, but anything is exciting through the rose-tinted glasses of winning gold. Claude lifts his beer by the handle on the classic mug, lager sloshing over the rim. The others follow suit. “Cheers, boys. We fuckin’ did it.”

That draws a fitting amount of hollering and whooping, and then they drink, lapsing into the kind of silence among jocks in their twenties that can only be explained by the vigorous, synchronized downing of alcohol. Afterward, Segs releases some kind of drawn-out groan that uses at least three different vowel sounds, an incomprehensible utterance. “Alcohol makes me horny,” he tops it off with.

“Everything makes you horny,” Claude says. He knows because he’s had to overhear Segs’ half-concealed moans from the shower each morning. He’s not sure what Segs sees in his dreams every night, but whatever it is, Claude definitely doesn’t see it as often.

“Come on, you can’t tell me you haven’t been thinking about it for this whole fucking championship. Everyone’s hot here!” Segs punctuates the statement with a few more gulps of his beer, grinning sleazy and wide after he kills it.

“Everyone _is_ hot here,” Eakin backs him up, whether out of actual agreement or plain loyalty. Toffoli laughs, a hiccupping sound. Claude rolls his eyes.

“Look, I don’t know,” Segs backpedals, doing that thing where he gets all innocent and unassuming right when you’re expecting him to be the opposite. Over the past couple weeks of being his roommate, Claude has been continuously surprised by how strong Tyler Seguin’s _who, me?_ vibes can get. “I’m just saying, there's a lotta good options. You must be feeling it. Come on, Sid?” Segs turns for support.

“Nope.” Sid pops the ‘p’ and gives a flat shake of his head. He must know how dangerous it is to encourage Segs at anything but hockey. “I’ve been stayin’ focused.”

“But now we won,” Ekblad reminds them all, a truth simple enough for him to be confident in claiming at nineteen years old, so much younger than everyone.

Toffoli goes, “ _Ayy_ ,” at that, California branded all over him even though he’s as Canadian as the rest of them. Seemingly from nowhere, Muzzin appears at his shoulder over the back of the booth to high five him, then drifts away again without comment. That LA water must have something weird in it.

Anyway, Ekblad is right—they won. The weight of victory is warm and welcome like the buzz you get from a couple good drinks. But they’re a bit past just a couple drinks now, and still feeling exactly as good.

A truly gorgeous woman passes by them then. She’s blonde, with that European look—sharp cheekbones, bright eyes. She gives Segs a coy little smile as she goes.

Segs’ gaze stays glued to her until he has to rotate his head to look all the way behind himself. “You can’t _always_ stay focused with women like that around, man.” Eakin nods his agreement, face ruddy to match his hair.

“It’ll pass,” Sid assures them, shaking his head again and staring into the distance like some sort of wise prophet the young adventurers consult in a movie. “I never understood why people make such a huge deal out of sex. It’s like, pretty overrated.”

“Uh, are you sure you’re doing it right?” Claude cracks, because nobody else at the table has the guts to rib Sid. If Spezz or Burnzie were here, they would, but as it is, it’s just them and some little kids. Segs is the oldest of them, and he’s still only an adult-in-training.

“How could I be doing sex wrong?” Sid asks, shrugging. “You just get in her and bang it home, right?”

Everyone at the table freezes. Claude has to fight not to cover his own mouth with his hand, his amusement and horror doing something obvious to his expression. Eakin, Toffoli, and Ekblad start to give weak, polite chuckles a few beats too late, choosing to believe that Sid’s made a joke. Claude takes a moment to be grateful, for the sake of women all over the world, that the three of them even recognize this as the wrong approach to sex. Sid is old enough to know better, but Claude is sure that a lot of guys in their early twenties still think sex consists solely of mounting a body and jackhammering mindlessly.

Segs is the only one who looks poised to comment. He opens his mouth wide, and Claude’s hand flies to his thigh under the table, squeezes so hard his fingertips dig in.

“Ouch,” Segs mutters instead, and the moment passes.

Claude doesn’t know why he feels any urge to protect Sid. He doesn’t owe it to him.

The good mood never really settles back into itself after the awkwardness, so the young guys all drift away one by one, to the bar or to other teammates, until Sid and Claude are the only two left at the table.

Claude may have been charitable to Sid before, but alone like this, he can be selfish. He sucks down a huge swig of beer, and then says what Segs was undoubtedly going to say in front of everyone two minutes ago. “Holy shit, Croz. You’ve never had good sex, have you?”

Sid splutters. He’s drunk, face flushed, so he has no polite brush-offs or trained media responses. “Shut up, I have. ‘Course I have, man. I’m twenty-seven, ‘course I’ve had good sex by now.”

Still, Claude is certain that he hasn’t. Twenty-seven, Sid is _twenty-seven_ and no one has ever thought to take the time, to show him how, to make it really good for him. Suddenly it seems undeniably criminal.

Maybe Sid is just one of those people that isn’t into sex that much, Claude considers. He’s not sure what the right term is or how it works, not after this much alcohol, but he attempts to ask anyway. “D’you just…not want sex that much? You don’t, like, get turned on a lot and stuff?”

“No, I…” Sid starts. His brows come down over his eyes a bit more, and he looks younger, kinda squishy-faced and cute. There’s a piece of gold confetti stuck to his neck, trapped there by the red ribbon of his medal. “I want it. I think about it all the time, I—imagine stuff, you know. But that’s just…fantasies,” he finishes, tripping over the word.

Claude swallows. “And the real thing never lives up?”

Sid nods, gaze focused low enough that his eyelashes fan over his cheeks. He hasn’t met Claude’s eyes in at least a minute. Claude swears in his head, eyes flicking over Sid’s body—his firm shoulders, his sturdy nose. Claude’s wanted to bruise him before, wanted to bust him up and make him bleed. Now, he’s only a few weeks removed from that same dislike, but all he can think is: how has nobody taken care of Sid?

“You just aren’t sleeping with the right people,” Claude concludes.

“I wouldn’t say it’s that,” Sid says, shifting. “All the girls I’ve slept with were fine. There was nothing wrong with them.”

“I'm sure there was nothing _wrong_ with them,” Claude says. He tries not to roll his eyes more, and downs the last bit of his beer to keep him from doing it. The thunk of his empty glass on the table is prominent. “But did they ask you what you wanted? Or what you like? Did they do the right things to you?”

Claude stops there when he realizes that Sid’s eyes have gone a little hazy, looking at Claude. His lips are parted. It must just be the alcohol. They’re closer together somehow, though Claude’s not certain who moved. Probably, it was him. Probably, Claude should admit to himself that he’s been trying to get closer to Sid this whole tournament. And now that he is, Sid looks…different. “No,” he answers, low and quiet.

It occurs to Claude that they’re both fairly drunk, drunk enough for this conversation to tip over some dangerous, off-limits edge.

Drunk enough for Claude to look a bad idea in the face and think, _I should just do that._

“Then they weren’t good in bed like I am,” Claude says. “And they didn’t treat you like I could.”

Sid sucks a big breath in, so he shouldn’t sound breathless when he goes, “You mean, you’d wanna…” He does a vague nod with his head instead of using a word, like there’s anyone within earshot who would even care. “With me?”

“What, have sex? Fuck? Yeah, I would.” Sid is so dumb sometimes, able to say the word ‘sex’ a million times as long as the context is removed or clinical, but not able to push it out of his fat mouth when it’s about Claude. God, Claude wants to put his fingers in that mouth. He’d thought that was a spite thing. Turns out not.

But then, horribly, Sid clams up. His shoulders come up by his ears and he angles himself away from Claude a little bit. “I’m not sure if I even like guys. I don’t know if I wanna sleep with one,” he claims.

Claude resists the urge to groan out loud. _Fuck_. If he’s just going to get shot down here, he should go about making it into a joke now. It’s Sidney Crosby, for fuck’s sake. He’s about the worst person Claude could choose to freak out with a gay sex proposition.

But still, it’s _Sidney Crosby_. And Claude’s never been one to freak out about that in a hockey sense, but this isn’t a hockey sense. “Have you ever thought about it?” he pushes.

Sid scowls, but it’s so light that it looks more like a pout. “I told you, thinking about it is different from doing it.”

That’s not _no_. In fact, that didn’t even sound like _no_. “Whatever. Look, you don’t know if you like guys? That hang-up is so easy to fix,” Claude tells him, even though any sober person could see how it’s not. “We put you in a blindfold, and you can just lie back and pretend it’s whoever you want blowing your mind. Like your fantasies.”

Sober Claude would probably say that’s about the dumbest idea Drunk Claude’s ever had, but in some impossible way, it makes Sid’s guards drop. He relaxes, then leans forward again. “Oh. So then I could just…ask you for what I want, and you’d handle it?”

“Exactly,” Claude says. He’s loose, high from the win and the drinks, and words that should never see the light of day are slipping out of his mouth with ease now. “I could ride you, y’know? You’d barely have to do anything.”

“That sounds…good,” Sid says slowly. Claude bets it would be. Sid has to handle a lot himself, and it’d probably be nice to have someone else provide for him, for once. Claude takes a moment to marvel at the turn his life has taken, the state he’s in—abruptly rock hard in the bar in the fucking Czech Republic because they’re talking about how Sid might let him smash. Jesus.

Sid continues, “But we can’t right now,” scrubbing a hand over his eyes. “We’re—I’m drunk.”

“I know,” Claude laments. That had seemed like an awesome thing a few minutes ago, but now it’s a shame. “Tomorrow, though. Before we leave? I’m serious, don’t forget.”

“Don’t think I could,” Sid says, and his eyes come up to find Claude’s, a pro at meeting challenges even when he’s nervous. “Tomorrow.”

 

\---

 

When tomorrow is today and Claude wakes up hungover and dry in the mouth, he remembers that conversation with a dawning sense of abject horror that hadn’t been there when it was happening.

 _Oh, god,_ he thinks first when he remembers offering to let Sidney Crosby fuck him. _Wait a minute_ , he thinks second when he remembers Sidney Crosby agreeing. _Whatever_ , he thinks third when he remembers that nobody ever comes through on the plans they make while drunk. This is definitely some level of mortifying, but it could’ve been a lot worse. And they’d been pretty blasted. Chances are, Sid doesn’t even remember.

Claude rolls over, sucking the gross post-beer taste from his teeth. There’s something weird on his right hand. He feels off, and not just in a hungover way. He stands up from the bed—or narrowly avoids tumbling over the side of it, more accurately—and waddles into the bathroom, at which point he hones in on the sense that something feels…tacky, between his legs. He sits down to pee because he’s a little lightheaded, and reaches behind himself to cautiously, reluctantly run a finger over his asshole.

Yeah, that’s dried lube there, like he’s realizing he also has on his first two fingers. Which means Claude definitely tried to finger himself while drunk when he got back last night. But there’s no flaky jizz on his hands or his tummy, and he doesn’t remember an orgasm. Which means Claude definitely passed out in the middle of trying to finger himself.

Claude wishes he would stop doing things that seem hot at the time and seem gross later. He hops in the shower, contemplating idly that he might be able to apply the same logic to his ideas about blindfolding Sid and riding him for all he’s worth. Maybe Claude can put it down to drunkenness, and be able to say with truth that the thought doesn’t actually turn him on.

But then he’s cleaning himself up, stroking over his hole to be thorough and thinking of Sid at the same time, and—it’s still hot, not gross.

Even so, Claude is resolved to avoid jerking off to any mental picture of Sid. Come fall, they’ll be enemies again; this World Championship victory with Sid doesn’t negate that, this new attraction to Sid doesn’t negate that. Claude gets on a plane out of Prague in twenty-four hours, and he probably won’t even lay eyes on Sid again before that happens, so there’s no point in nurturing some sprouting interest that he’ll just have to kill later.

He cuts the shower, dries off, and then cleans his teeth and runs some mouthwash through, giving it a good gargle. Hangover mouth is the worst when Drunk Claude isn’t feeling considerate enough to brush his teeth before bed, but it’s nothing he can’t fix.

After that, he texts Segs to see where he’s at. Claude knows Segs is going to Paris today with some of his buddies, but he didn’t come back last night and all his stuff seems to be gone, so maybe he’s already left.

 _Moved my shit to a friends hotel last night homie_ , he gets back. _Headed to brunch with the guysssss_. _We’re not there yet. Wanna meet up with us?_

Claude’s not sure exactly who ‘the guysssss’ entails, Team Canada or Segs’ Toronto friends that came to see him play, but it doesn’t matter. There’s no way Claude’s getting dressed and dragging his ass through the Old Town Square on a pounding head and zero caffeine.

 _Nah I’m good. Have fun. See ya next season._ He’d rather stay in, rehydrate, and pack at his own pace.

Later, a knock comes on the door while he’s packing, and Claude feels his eyebrows scrunch. It might be Segs, but he acted like he was going from brunch to the airport and wouldn’t be back. Claude moves to get the door.

“Hey,” Sid says from the other side of the threshold when Claude pulls it open.

Claude’s spine straightens. What the hell? He had been ready to forget about last night, but here’s Sid, showing up as if telekinetically summoned by Claude’s internal embarrassment over everything he’d said.

Everything _they’d_ said, actually. Sid probably wants to clear the air, make sure things aren’t weird and check that Claude’s not going to go spouting off to his teammates in Philly about Sid’s lackluster sex life.

“Can I come in?” he asks, peering calmly over Claude’s shoulder at Segs’ empty half of the room.

“Guess so,” Claude responds, shrugging off mild horror and stepping aside to let Sid through. He hadn’t pulled the bedspread back up over the mattress after stumbling out of bed in the morning. What if there’s lube stains on the sheet where Sid can see? What if he looks at them and knows exactly what Claude got up to after their conversation?

Sid isn’t looking at the bed, though. He’s studying Claude’s face with a keen expression. “Why do you look surprised to see me? We made plans,” he says.

 _Made plans_. As if thinking out loud about a somewhat-shared, mostly-drunken fantasy were the same thing as setting a time to grab appetizers and drinks at happy hour. It’s not, but of course Sid doesn’t get that. If Sid says he’s going to do something, he follows through. He wouldn’t adhere to the unspoken social rule that people can’t be held to the commitments they make while drunk.

“I’m not surprised,” Claude insists, although he demonstrably is. If Sid is here to make good on his commitments, and his commitments were to have sex with Claude, then. Then Sid is here to have sex with Claude. Right now.

Claude takes a moment to send up a mental thank-you to whatever it is up there that watches over them for the fact that he’s showered and brushed his teeth. He sneaks a quick look at the bedding. No lube stains that he can see. The last thing he needs is Sid showing up for the promise of good sex and instead getting poor hygiene. He could hold that over Claude’s head forever without even trying.

Sid clears his throat. “Um, so.” He steps closer and reaches for Claude’s wrist, lifts it so he can press something into Claude’s palm. Claude curls his fingers around it instinctively. “This was the closest thing I had.”

Claude takes a look at the bunched up fabric in his hand. It’s Sid’s sleeping mask, he registers. It’s black and opaque, kind of like a blindfold.

Fuck, exactly like a blindfold. Sid brought this here to serve as a blindfold.

Warmth starts to pool in Claude’s gut, the sticky sense of arousal rushing over him, ratcheting up a level. “D’you…want to put it on?” he asks, forcing the words out slowly to conceal how his heart jumps in his chest.

The way Sid bites his lip before he nods is comforting. Maybe Claude’s not the only one who feels like he’s unreasonably deep in his desire way faster than makes sense.

But Sid doesn’t reach to take the sleeping mask back from him, and he realizes that Sid’s waiting for _Claude_ to put it on him. _Fucking Christ_ , Claude thinks, but that’s not what he says out loud. “Sit on the bed. Close your eyes.”

And Sid—against all odds, against what all logic would indicate is likely—Sid listens.

He carefully takes a seat on the edge of Claude’s hotel room double, palms resting on the white comforter. Then he takes a deep breath and closes his eyes on the exhale. His knees bow apart a bit with the breath. Claude watches them peeking out from the legs of Sid’s ugly khaki shorts, thinks about touching them. He thinks about easing those shorts off Sid’s body.

It isn’t an easy thing to want, for him. If desires worked like light switches, Claude would flick this one off.

He lifts the hand with the sleeping mask in it, unfolding it and smoothing out the wrinkles. Then he steps in close enough to fit the silky side over Sid’s closed eyelids, stretching out the elastic to tuck over Sid’s head. There’s something unbearably intimate about it, the kind of gesture Claude would never have dreamed he’d do to Sid before yesterday. If he stops to think about it for too long, Claude starts to feel wildly out of his depth here with this power and responsibility, with Sid already tilting his chin up in search of him.

Now Sid is surrendering any defenses he usually has at his disposal. If Claude wanted, he could leave Sid here, calling out Claude’s name until he realizes he’s alone and has to take off his own blindfold and be humiliated by what he wanted done to him.

Claude almost chokes at the thought of it. It’s something he wouldn’t have put past himself a couple of years ago. Back when he wouldn’t have put it past Sid either.

But Sid is here, and he’s trusting Claude with this. And for all that Claude is unsure he can actually handle it, he leans into the pressure and lets his instincts drive him just the way he has in every other situation that he’s been a leader to someone.

“Gonna undress you now,” he says. He grips the hem of Sid’s shirt and pulls it up off of him, and Sid moves in accordance to help. Then come the shorts; Claude kneels down in the space between Sid’s knees and reaches for the button, the zipper. “Lift,” he directs, and up come Sid’s hips to get them off. The shorts are pooled around Sid’s ankles when Claude realizes that he should have taken Sid’s shoes off first. Embarrassed, he puts a hand above Sid’s knee and squeezes in apology, even though Sid probably won’t know what it’s for. Then he turns his attention to Sid’s shoes.

“Don’t untie ‘em,” Sid says. “I just slip them off.”

Claude frowns. “You never untie them?”

“They’re tied right how they are,” Sid explains.

So Claude just pulls at the heels to slide them off Sid’s feet, socks too. He flings items in various directions as he gets rid of them, knowing that they’ll take longer to gather up later.

It’s just Sid’s underwear left. Calvin Klein, Claude notes. He itches to say something obnoxious and irrelevant about it, just to push Sid’s buttons. _Too good for Hanes like the rest of us?_ He doesn’t, though. Instead, he drags them down by the waistband, and Sid helps him shimmy them down off his legs, and then he’s bare on display for Claude’s gaze.

There’s something peculiar about how intriguing it is to like bodies with the same parts as your own. There’s almost no novelty to it. Claude’s always known what a dick looks like and how it functions, and he sees naked men on a near daily basis. Despite all that, he still has the urge to spread Sid out on the sheets and just look at him. He doesn’t know what Sid likes. _Sid_ doesn’t even seem to know what Sid likes. There could be any number of things that turn him on, turn him off, wind him up, make him needy. And if Claude’s astute enough, he’ll get to surprise Sid with them as well as himself.

“Lie back,” he says.

Sid doesn’t move. “…Here?”

Claude breathes out through his nose. “No, scoot back. Head on the pillows,” he instructs, and Sid hastens to cooperate. His feet come up and he scuttles further back until he has to reach behind himself to feel for the pillows, at which point it becomes obvious that he’s unsure of how to arrange himself on the mattress. Claude has to be better at guiding him, but it’s an unfamiliar dynamic. Claude’s never had to imagine what he would do with _Sid_ on the other end of a situation like this.

“I’m gonna—” he starts, casting off his own clothes and joining Sid on the bed in a matter of seconds. He pulls a pillow into place just under where Sid has paused halfway to his back, propped up on his elbows. With one hand over Sid’s sternum and one cradling his head, Claude guides him all the way down. “Here, I want you here. Perfect.” He unbends Sid’s knees one at a time, then settles his weight on Sid’s thighs. They can handle it. “Okay with me on top of you?”

Sid swallows visibly. “Yeah.”

Claude takes stock of Sid below him, strung tight like he’s waiting for something, bracing himself. He’s still mostly soft in the space between Claude’s thighs, but Claude had expected that he might need some coaxing. “You nervous?” he asks, low and delicate.

Sid thinks about it. “Little bit of nerves, yeah.” Claude could tell that he was, but it takes a man some courage to admit that he’s nervous for sex, especially at the age they are. He’s not exactly taking Sid’s virginity, but it doesn’t feel that far off.

“We’re gonna take it so slow,” Claude says, pitching forward to meet Sid’s body with his own, gradual and easy. He slips a couple of fingers into the elastic of Sid’s eye mask right behind his ear. “Comfortable?” he checks, waiting for Sid to nod. “I need you to tell me if you want it off ever, okay?”

“I can do that.” After a moment, Sid’s hands come up into Claude’s hair. They’re breathing each other’s air now. Claude waffles over the idea of a kiss, leans in to take one but diverts course at the last second. His mouth catches Sid’s cheek, trailing down over his jaw. Light as a feather, Claude scrapes his teeth over the beginnings of Sid’s stubble, what was probably a close shave earlier this morning. Claude can still smell a trace of his aftershave, but when he sucks at the hinge of Sid’s jaw he just tastes like body now, like skin, a little prickly beneath his lips. The proximity fires up his libido, reminds him of why people crave sex even with people they don’t know or people they’re not being that choosy about. If the most average sex Claude’s ever had was even half as good as how it feels to release his weight over Sid’s body, be naked against him and mouth down his throat, then it was still worth it.

It’s not overrated. God, Sid should get to know.

He reaches a place on Sid’s neck that slices through the tension. His fingers lock in Claude’s hair and he tilts his chin up to create more space, a signal to stay put without words to say as much. Claude nips at the sensitive spot until he’s got Sid breathing hard and wriggling a little, and fuck, there’s Sid’s cock stiffening up. Claude has half a mind to reach between them and stroke him, but he knows the payoff will be greater for them both if he waits.

So he sits up in Sid’s lap again and drinks in the sight of him. Sid can’t see him, which means Claude’s able to look his fill. He trails his fingertips down Sid’s heaving chest. The touch is barely there, but Sid’s reacting to it, shivering and shifting on the covers underneath him. Perching with one knee on each side of Sid’s wide hips makes the greedy part of Claude’s brain rocket straight to the thought of how it’s going to feel to have Sid inside him, but he’d promised to make this good for Sid. Claude will probably leave here satisfied no matter what. It’s Sid who needs attention, focus, care.

Besides, Claude thinks as he watches Sid’s teeth roll over his bottom lip—this is greed of a different kind. “This feel good?” Claude asks, swiping the pad of his thumb over one of Sid’s nipples, toying with the peak. Sid only answers in a little whimper, so Claude presses harder and demands, “Do people usually touch you here?” before he lowers his mouth to the other and flicks his tongue over it to make it rise.

“Usually skip it,” Sid grits out like he’s learning that was a mistake. There are lovely splotches of color blooming on his cheeks below the eye mask. Claude bets that he can make them spread. He sucks on the nipple he’s got his lips over and pinches the bud of the other one. Sid’s hips buck up gratifyingly, and Claude has to resist the urge to grind down and give him too much of what he wants too soon. He scoots lower and refocuses his attention on Sid’s stomach, dragging his teeth along stretches of Sid’s belly that have softened up a bit throughout playoffs and the tournament. Soon they’ll go their separate ways to start summer training, and those areas will get re-built, disappearing into muscle once more. In a few months, Sid’s body might feel different underneath someone’s lips. Claude thinks with surprising bitterness that he won’t get to be the one to find out.

He has right now, at least. Shuffling even lower on the bed, he settles on his stomach between Sid’s legs so he can pull the skin of Sid’s thigh into his mouth and suck on it. Everything’s a surprise for Sid, who breathes in air just barely short of a gasp. Claude leaves bites just hard enough that they’ll mark later, a map of where he’s been on Sid’s body trailing up, up, to where his body hair gets sparse nearer to the top of his groin. Then his hips again, lower belly. Everywhere but where Sid’s cock is straining against Claude’s chest, getting harder to ignore.

Sid clears his throat, innocuous and shy enough to be genuine rather than pointed. “You said you’d take care of what I want,” he rasps.

Claude smirks into Sid’s hipbone. Sid has a dangerously good memory for things they said while inebriated. “So what do you want?” He noses down the vee of Sid’s hips. Closer, but not _there_ yet. “Any ideas?”

Sid squirms. His dick is tapping on Claude’s left cheek now. “I think you know.”

“Oh, you want me to suck you,” Claude says as if it’s just occurring to him. As if it isn’t, you know, right in front of his face. “Are you gonna say please?”

He asks just to antagonize him, but Sid lifts his head off the pillow and faces Claude down so directly that it’s like the blindfold isn’t even there. _If that’s what it takes_ , he can practically hear Sid think. Sid has to be flustered, laid out naked and hard and at Claude’s mercy in a fucking sleeping mask. He’s been biting his lips, Claude can tell by how red they are. But he parts them now to do what needs to be done. “Please.”

Claude isn’t going to fuck around with _please what?_ He fits his lips over the head of Sid’s cock, sucking and smacking noisily just for the satisfaction of knowing Sid can hear it with the distraction of sight taken away from him. “The girls you slept with,” he pulls off to say. “Did they blow you well, at least?”

Sid tries to dodge the question. “A mouth’s a mouth, ain’t it?”

“Mine’s better,” Claude says, casual like discussing the weather. Then he hikes Sid’s massive thighs over his shoulders and puts his mouth to the best use he can in between them.

Sid keeps his own mouth closed as if it’s helping to hold in moans, but it only works to make his noises more obscene, humming and groaning in the back of his throat. Finally he breaks, opening up to let out, “God,” when Claude drags the flat of his tongue up the underside of his shaft. “That’s good.”

“Yeah? And this?” Claude pushes, working his tongue between Sid’s balls, over each of them.

“Yeah, good. Fuck, it’s good.” Sid’s heels are pressing in on Claude’s lower back, urging him on. Claude sucks one of Sid’s balls into his mouth, gentle, careful. A shade too much in this area is an instant mood killer, and some guys are a lot more sensitive than others in the pain way, but Sid unravels another inch further in the pleasure way. One of his feet comes down to plant on the mattress, and then he’s moaning open-mouthed, the most unabashed he’s been about a noise yet. Claude turns his attention to the other one, using a hand to hold Sid’s dick out of the way against his stomach. He’s rubbing it more than he is full-on jacking it, and still Sid’s letting out sounds, so fucking responsive. Claude wonders how much of it is the blindfold heightening the sensations and how much of it is just Sid discovering what it’s like to have a partner who’s keyed into his reactions, eager to identify his wants and needs.

“Did you tell those girls that you wanted them here?” Claude asks, tonguing between Sid’s balls again for emphasis. “D’you say you like this?”

Sid just shakes his head. He doesn’t offer an explanation why not.

“Can’t blame them for that. How are they supposed to take care of you if you keep secrets?”

And maybe that’s a poke too far, something Sid is sensitive about. “Can you just—”

 _Shut up and suck me off_ , is maybe what he wants to say, but he can’t even get that far. Claude kisses up the line of his cock, hoping that’s gentle enough to count as an apology. It’s guesswork, figuring out how to push Sid in the right way. Not everything is going to go perfectly. “I know it’s kinda harder than it seems, huh,” Claude allows, stroking a thumb over Sid’s hipbone. “To just say stuff.”

Sid pushes himself up onto his elbows, huffing. His dick is momentarily forgotten, because he looks like he’s thinking harder about what he’s going to say. “It just…feels like something I should be better at. Talking about it.”

Claude knows how that feels. Being embarrassed about being bad at something not just because you’re bad at it, but because it doesn’t seem like a thing you should have difficulty with in the first place. He and Sid are both people who have high expectations of themselves. Sid can play it off around teammates in a bar like he has no idea that he could be having better sex, but this makes a lot more sense. Sid isn’t the type to settle for mediocrity unless he’s had much more trouble surpassing it than he wants to acknowledge.

Claude knows because he’s been on the losing end of the brunt of Sid’s willpower before. But now he knows what it’s like to win _with_ Sid, and he wants more of it.

“Eh, practice, right?” he says, closing his fist around Sid’s erection. “Tell me what feels good, I want to hear.” Then he takes Sid back into his mouth, keeps it really wet for him.

“Yeah, that. I want, uh.”

“Mm?”

“I want it harder. You could suck on the head harder? I sound fucking stupid,” complains Sid.

“No, sounds like I’m gonna suck you harder and make you feel fucking fantastic.”

So Claude goes kind of buck-wild on the suction, and very quickly Sid is flat on his back again, sharing a little more this time. “Just like that, fuck. Can you, uh…deeper? _Oh_ , oh. That’s amazing.”

Every time Claude pulls off is loud and obvious. He’d keep doing it just to tease Sid with the sound, the stop-and-start, but this time he actually wants to check in on him. “You all good?”

Sid’s hips buck in search of the missing pressure. “What?” he says, disoriented. “Yeah. So far you’re keeping your promises.”

He reaches for Claude’s head, his neck, something, but it gives Claude pause. _His promises_. He had said that Sid could pretend he was having sex with whoever he wanted. More than likely, Claude doesn’t match up to whoever that is.

“No touching, for you. No hands,” he tells Sid, and then resolves to talk less for the rest of the time they’re in bed together. His voice is distinctive, hard to ignore.

Sid’s fist curls around air somewhere just short of Claude’s ear. “Since when was that a rule?” Claude doesn’t answer, and Sid huffs. “Alright. Can I at least get restraints then?”

Claude takes a moment to be impressed Sid even knows the term ‘restraints’ when he’s led such an uninspired sex life up until now. After that passes, he can’t refrain from biting back, “You don’t get _help_ , you have to follow the rules yourself.” What, does he think that Claude just walks around at international tournaments with handcuffs and hogties on hand in case someone wants to get freaky? Okay, Claude had kind of made it sound like that was the case, but.

“You—” Sid starts in a tone that sounds a lot like he’d wanted to finish with _asshole, bastard, pest_. He must not realize that Claude doesn’t want to be all that right now, doesn’t want to play the distinct role of contemptible nuisance usually reserved for him in Sid’s mind. This is something he’s doing for Sid’s own good, to remove their identities from the equation.

Sid gives his head a little resigned shake, his crooked grin the only thing Claude has to stare at on his face. “Fine. You’re drivin’, like you said.” He puts his hands up by his head. “You’re callin’ the shots.”

Claude can hum his appreciation for that, if nothing else. _You can trust me_ , he wants to say. But he doesn’t say anything. Especially not anything that he doesn’t know from experience to be true.

Claude shifts all his weight to his left knee so he can reach for the bedside table drawer. He may not walk around with handcuffs and hogties, but he does keep lube and condoms with him most of the time, because you never know. And now looking at Sid in his blindfold, it’s hard to overstate the degree to which Claude really _didn’t know_. Preparedness is a godsend, and now he’s reaping the fortuitous reward of his pitiful abandoned masturbation attempt: lube and condoms he doesn’t have to leave Sid alone to go dig out of his suitcase somewhere.

He keeps an eye on Sid’s fidgeting hands, insecure about their own emptiness. “Grab the headboard if you can’t keep them to yourself,” he directs, opening the lube.

Sid only clenches fists in the sheets. Claude isn’t sure why he’s disappointed. He reminds himself to _be quiet_ , turns his attention back to his own hands and lubes up a couple of fingers, runs them over the crease of his ass and pushes in. As clumsy as his efforts last night were, he’s well-acquainted with doing this to himself, knows how to make it quick. He’s kind of glad that Sid can’t watch him do it. Would he think it was hot, or would his mouth contort at the unsexy reality of having to stretch, prepare?

Claude’s never found it unsexy. But that’s one of the myriad reasons he’s known for so long that he likes having sex with men, or anal with anyone, at the very least. Sid doesn’t have the same years of certainty and practice behind him. Maybe it’s best not to draw attention to the ways in which having sex with a guy can be functionally different.

He goes down on Sid again to distract him while he curls his fingers against his own prostate. The fingering is mostly utilitarian in nature, a means to an end—the end being Sid’s dick inside him. Still, he probably gives himself away by how he starts dropping involuntary sounds around Sid’s cock because of it.

“Are you touching yourself?” Sid registers.

“Mhm,” Claude breathes out, pulling off.

“Your dick?”

Not exactly, although Claude can’t believe he’s managed to go this long without it, too focused on Sid. He slips a third finger inside himself. “Getting ready,” he admits, carefully studying what he can see of Sid’s face for a reaction.

It doesn’t seem to process for Sid for a moment. But then he must get it. He makes a strangled noise, and then one by one, he lifts his arms to grip the top of the headboard tight.

Sid’s an adult. He wouldn’t be in bed with a man if he didn’t want to be. Maybe it’s not Claude he would have chosen to be his first if he could have picked from anyone in the world—they don’t deserve that high regard from each other anyway. So maybe Sid is still fantasizing about someone else from behind that blindfold, just like Claude said he was allowed to. But Claude didn’t make him do anything. He draws his fingers out from inside himself, thinking about the fact that Sid showed up to fuck him of his own volition. So they’ll fuck.

Eventually.

The fist Claude has curled around Sid’s dick is pretty loose, and here’s the part where Sid starts to pump his hips into Claude’s grip to try to get something more substantial. The groans he makes turn whiny, peevish. “Hey, I need—”

Claude does grip him tighter, gives him slow strokes as he maneuvers his knees and hips into the right spot from before, the one that has him over Sid’s lap. He takes a condom from the bedside table and tears it open with his teeth so he can roll it down onto Sid. “Almost there,” he says, a reminder for everyone present. Then he ducks to nip at that spot on Sid’s neck again. “Slow, remember?”

Sid grits his teeth, bucking up again. “I thought that was for my benefit, not my torture.”

“Same thing.” Claude presses back to nestle Sid’s cock against the crease of his ass. They’re so fucking close now, and his compulsion to let go of his cool and cut to the chase is growing. But— “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.”

“I feel like I could come in five _fucking_ seconds, that’s…that’s called a sprint.”

A smile bubbles up on Claude’s face even though he bites down on his tongue to keep from it. Jesus, Sid is a trip. Before this perfect mess of a tournament, Claude could just think what he wanted to about him, picture him walking around self-righteously spreading drivel about _playing the game the right way_ , as if Claude plays the game the wrong way just because he’s playing against Sid. He could imagine Sid using media clichés as his vocabulary in everyday situations, never making any jokes or listening to any music or doing anything regular. But now he’s learned that Sid knows the words to the pop songs arenas play during warm-ups, and watches Game of Thrones enough to keep up a conversation about it, and laughs when he gets teased about not knowing what Goldschlager is, and even worse, is self-deprecatingly forthcoming about how he feels as long as he knows you’re not going to tell the world what he says. It’s delightfully distressing to gain access to a more complete picture of him—Claude will never be able to think of him with the same disdain he always relied upon.

Meanwhile, Sid’s nails are scratching on the wood of the bedframe and he’s rocking into the space between Claude’s cheeks, catching on his rim. He looks amazing like this, desperate and halfway to pieces, triceps flexing from his handle on the headboard. It’s not fair. Nothing about Sid has ever been fair to Claude. This is just the newest thing on the list.

“It’s okay, calm down.” Claude says, because everybody loves being told to calm down. “I need you to last. It’s so much better if you last.”

Sid nods, looking resolute like he’s been given a task and he’ll get it done however he has to, even if the task is as humiliating as _don’t chase your orgasm in the same way a dog humps human legs_. He still asks for more, though. “Give me something.” It’s not quite begging. But Claude can feel it hovering there unspoken: _please_. Sid would say it again if Claude asked him to, Claude is sure.

He won’t make him. He just reaches behind himself to get the head of Sid’s dick lined up right and presses it in.

Sid curses aloud when he gets the first taste of what it feels like. Claude works himself down on Sid gradually, taking an inch, rising up, sinking an inch lower than before, lifting up again.

As Claude settles all the way onto him, Sid starts making consistent sounds again, soft, sighing moans coaxed out of him with every rock of Claude’s body. Claude’s starting a library of the different ways Sid vocalizes his pleasure, and these are—

 _Love noises_ , Claude thinks inexplicably, and then he wants to die from internal mortification at once. It’s Sid’s sexual inexperience they’re doing away with; Sid should be the one getting hopelessly attached, not Claude.

He wants to ask Sid if it’s good, but he’s getting a little lost himself in the feeling, the familiar discomfort that’s already starting to ebb away into something better. His head is swimming. He takes hold of his own cock, alternating between real strokes and restrictive squeezes at the base.

Plus, there’s still the matter of not disrupting Sid’s imagination. They’re into the thick of it now, Sid’s dick nudging at his prostate every time Claude fucks down on it, but suddenly Claude has to swallow down the disheartening feeling that this could be a lot more…personal. A twinge of something tugs in his chest. He looks down at Sid, so good with his head tipped back and his knuckles white on the headboard, and wonders who he’s picturing instead of Claude.

He distracts himself from the thought by dipping forward to get his mouth on one of Sid’s nipples because that got him going so well before. He still has a job to do, something to prove, and he can’t let this niggling, stupid need for affection get in his way. Sid says, “Fingers, fingers,” so Claude backs off and uses his hands instead, pushing and pinching at the buds.

“God, how is that _so_ —” Sid’s knees bend, feet planting on the mattress, and he’s thrusting up to meet Claude every time he drops down now. He looks a little unhinged, his lips taking the shape of a grimace, sucking air between his teeth. “Please, I’m gonna come, let me,” and then he’s saying, “Claude, _Claude_ ,” and oh, thank fuck, he knows. He knows it’s Claude doing this to him and there’s no one else behind his eyelids.

“Claude, can I—” He rattles the headboard so hard that the cheap wood wheezes like it’s going to snap clean off.

“Yeah, fuck, touch me,” Claude says, far more relieved to break that rule than he should be as the person who made it up in the first place.

Sid’s hands fly off the headboard and onto Claude’s body, pulling him down until they’re chest to chest, hands traveling like they want to be everywhere all at once now that they’re allowed to be. It all falls to Sid to keep their rhythm, pounding up into him with an urgency that means he’s definitely about to come before Claude does, but that’s okay because the whole mission here was to make Sid want it enough to be selfish because it feels too fucking good not to be. And who knew that just being held like this could ramp things up for Claude as much as it does, leave him feeling closer to bursting every time Sid says his _name_ , fuck. Claude buries his face in Sid’s neck and lets him do the rest of the work until Sid comes, hips slowing through the aftershocks.

Mission accomplished, probably. But Sid's palms are still wandering the plane of Claude’s back, squeezing the little love handles over the back of his hips, and even though Claude’s already drawn this out as long as possible, he still doesn’t want it to be over yet. He lifts his face out from the warm pocket of Sid’s throat and again thinks about kissing him. He’s right there. The problem is that it in some way feels like a thing Sid hasn’t pre-approved, just left of every sex act that Sid’s been fine with. Claude doesn’t want to go ahead and take it without asking, but he can’t form the words. Instead he just hovers an inch away, somehow terrified of rejection even as they lay naked together.

But Sid closes the gap, pressing their mouths together blindly at first, and then pulling Claude’s bottom lip between his own once he has a sense of where it is. God, Claude has to make a concerted effort not to pant into his mouth. He hasn’t come yet, but he doesn’t want to grind down and make Sid think he’s asking for something other than this kiss, disrupt Sid’s fingers planting themselves in Claude’s hair.

They break apart eventually, though, and Sid remembers. Well, he remembers after he holds the base of the condom so that he can pull out and slip it off. He pauses after that, because he can’t see a thing and obviously has no idea where the wastebasket is, which is honestly fucking hilarious. Claude snickers quietly from above him, but then he carefully takes it from Sid’s hand and tosses it into the trash before he settles back down, still torturously hard against Sid’s stomach.  _That’s_ when Sid remembers.

He fumbles his hand between their bodies to feel for Claude’s dick. “Sorry I couldn’t—”

“No, no,” Claude kisses him again to quiet that train of thought. Yeah, Sid should know that it’s usually polite to try to make your partner come first, but Claude’s already demanded a lot of Sid today. Ideas about being inadequate are particularly dangerous right around now. “You’re so good.”

“What can I do for you?” Sid asks anyway, pulling on Claude’s cock in a little bit of an awkward grip what with the way there’s not much space between them. Of course he would be able to make literal store clerk words sound hot and perfect coming from him once he’s not afraid of stumbling over them.

Claude kind of can’t believe Sid is offering to do anything more at all considering how exhausted he must be. He recalls his own thoughts running wild at the bar last night though, the image of slipping his fingers into Sid’s red mouth. That’s not the only thing he wants.

“Stay right here, okay?” Claude tells him, shuffling onto his knees once more and walking himself further up the length of Sid’s torso. “Would you wanna try to blow me?”

“ _Try_ to?” Sid responds. It’s odd to watch him look affronted without being able to actually see his eyes, just the dramatic furrow of his brows.

Claude has to laugh. Sid’s never going to stop being Sid, even during sex, with Claude kneeling in front of his face with his dick out and ready. “Well, you haven’t done it before, no?”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t,” Sid says, and that’s a guarantee. He lifts his head and Claude takes the opportunity to prop the pillows up so they support his neck more.

“Let’s see it then.” So Claude closes a fist around himself and guides his cock up against Sid’s waiting lips, only a bump of contact until Sid opens up for him and, fuck, waits for Claude to feed him the head.

The warmth of his mouth is a little overwhelming after Claude’s spent the majority of the past hour ignoring his own hard-on. Before today, Claude’s only ever been this close to that mouth when Sid was barking profanities at him over the years. This is dirtier and sweeter at the same time.

Sid is precocious enough to try doing the same things he liked getting done to him; he sucks intently on the head, presses his tongue hard against the underside of Claude’s shaft. When he starts to warm up, he gets a little too enthusiastic and moves his head to try to take Claude deeper, but the angle’s bad for that and he gags, has to draw back to cough. He’s trying again right away though, still straining his neck to get more than Claude’s giving him.

“Don’t try to take too much, I don’t want you to choke,” Claude says. He eases his cock out of Sid’s mouth, pushes it back in only barely. “Just the tip, okay? Just the tip.”

Sid breaks focus to let out a small giggle-honk, but then he sticks to the head of Claude’s dick like he’s told. Now that he’s allowed to feel Claude up, he’s having a field day with it, petting his thighs and caressing his sides. His palms settle on Claude’s ass and dig in, which is, uh. The tips of his fingers rest just inside the cleft, and if Claude isn’t imagining it, they’re inching closer to his hole like he wants to touch there too.

He lets Sid get away with asking the question silently rather than verbally, just goes, “Yeah, do it.”

Sid hums softly around the tip of Claude’s cock, then pops off. “Um, lube?”

A couple fingers would be fine without adding more when Claude’s already been fucked, but some extra moisture can’t hurt. Inspired, desperate, and greedy, Claude chokes out, “Spit,” and Sid gets it, Sid does it, Sid’s such a quick learner for someone who describes having had such boring sex—

It isn’t exactly what Claude pictured at the bar, but Sid’s own fingers in his mouth look pretty incredible too. And they feel even better when he releases them and gets them inside of Claude, prodding in search of the spot that’ll make him arch.

“Where—?” he asks cluelessly as he hits right on it.

“ _There_ , Jesus Christ,” Claude gasps, his eyelids fluttering. It doesn’t stop him from spotting the smirk sprouting on Sid’s face. “Fuck you, _don’t_ say ‘just Sid is—’” Sid crooks his fingers again. “Ah, fuck.”

“I’m not saying anything, I’m busy,” he declares, and then he shifts around in search of Claude’s cock until it’s nudging at his lips again so he can suck on it.

“I’m gonna lose my mind, you have no idea what you look like,” Claude babbles. He’s feeling that familiar numbness in his toes that means he’s close, riding that point on the edge when you think you might actually go crazy. “I’m gonna come,” he warns, but Sid’s not letting up on his prostate, not letting up on the most sensitive part of his cock, and Claude just has to take the rest of his length in hand and urge it out onto Sid’s tongue, breathing hard through the pulsing sensation.

Sid swallows, because what else could he do, get up and stumble around bumping into stuff until he found a sink to spit into? Well, he could take his own blindfold off, but Claude feels like that’s even less likely when he’s kept it on for this long. He draws out of Sid’s mouth for what’ll be the last time, regrettably, and flops onto the empty side of the mattress.

Sid smacks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Oh, that’s…” he dithers over a description.

“I know it doesn’t taste great,” Claude sympathizes, slowly coming down from the high of his orgasm. Although, it’s kind of unbelievable that he even has to say it. What kind of dude hasn’t tasted his own come out of curiosity at one point or another?

Apparently, the Sid kind. “It’s not the worst thing in the world,” he counters diplomatically.

“But it’s kinda nasty, eh? Here, wait.” Claude gets up to fish a water bottle out of one of his bags. While he’s up, his eyes catch on the hotel room curtains. The sheer ones that let light in are already pulled closed, but Claude draws the thicker ones in part of the way so that it won’t be as bright when they take off Sid’s blindfold, which they should do now. Claude hesitates by the window. He peers over his shoulder at Sid, lying naked on the bed with his hands clasped over his tummy, sleeping mask still covering his eyes.

Claude brings the water bottle back to the bed, says, “Sit up, yeah?” and then presses it into one of Sid’s hands. Sid unscrews the lid, drinks. It’s silent. He finishes and passes it back to Claude, who puts it on the bedside table. They just sit there on the edge of the bed for another moment.

Finally, Claude reaches up to the elastic of the eye mask, slipping a couple fingers into it beside Sid’s ear like he did before they even really started this. “Time for this to come off, okay?”

Sid chews on his lip, giving one slow nod. This feels like…the absolute hardest thing Claude has had to do today.

He inhales to brace himself, then slides the mask up onto Sid’s forehead, then all the way off. Sid takes a couple tries to blink his eyes open, and then they both have to cope with the troublesome affair of having to see, be seen, and know that they’re being seen. Claude is left feeling incredibly naked before Sid’s living, alert gaze.

Perhaps the blindfold wasn’t just for Sid. Maybe Claude just didn’t want to be seen being gentle with him. He knows it’s revealing.

And then Sid says, “Hey,” like they need a greeting after everything that they’ve just done together. They do. Claude sways in toward him a little, and Sid does the same, and for a moment Claude thinks they’re going to kiss again, but it doesn’t happen. He stands up before he can think about how that makes him feel, walking around to the other side of the bed so he can lie down and pointedly not look at Sid looking at him.

Sid lies back down too, a good couple feet away across the mattress. Now that the intimacy of the moment is fading, Claude remembers that they’re not…friends. They don’t have much to say to each other. Claude should check in, make sure Sid’s feeling fine, but he has to rack his brain to think of the right words, now. This is definitively awkward.

“I like men,” Sid blurts into the empty silence.

Claude purses his lips at the ceiling, the picture of Sid a few minutes ago, blissed out with his lips wrapped around the head of Claude’s cock, pasted across his brain. _You sure do._ But he can be kind about this, he can. And he may not be perfect at aftercare, but he’s in tune enough to know that he shouldn’t make people feel bad for what they enjoy doing in bed, especially when he gets to benefit. Exhaling, he rolls onto his side. “Only men?”

Sid heaves a melodramatic sigh at the same ceiling, throwing the crook of his elbow over his eyes like he wants the blindfold back. “I don’t know yet.” When he rolls over onto his side to face Claude, that arm unravels until the backs of his fingers brush Claude’s chest. “I liked this,” he whispers.

 _I like you_ , Claude thinks reluctantly, and that seems like it would be the natural follow-up, but Claude’s not sure if it’s true for Sid. Even so, he wishes one of them would say it, and that means something.

“Me too,” Claude says instead, feeling pretty dumb about it. “And…thanks for telling me. I know you prob’ly know this and stuff, but it’s okay to just like guys. Or not. Or, like…it’s cool to not know for sure yet. Don’t let it bother you.”  

They’re not friends, except—today happened. There was sex, yeah, but there was also a surprising amount of benevolence, fun. Laughter. “Thanks,” Sid says. “We should talk about when we can see each other next,” because of course Sid would go from _gay crisis_ to _I’d love to see you again sometime_ in less than a minute, and, oh.

“Next?” Claude perks up, something traitorous buzzing within him.

Sid’s nostrils flare with the determined breath he lets out. “All I know is that I want to do this again. If you don’t, then that’s fine, but I do,” he says, painstakingly sure as he lets out the words. Claude doesn’t get how Sid can struggle to say, like, _suck my dick_ , but he’s so far ahead of Claude with things that are much, much harder to ask for.

Claude pushes closer to Sid on the bed, cancelling all the distance. “We’ll find a way,” he promises, and then he dips down to kiss Sid deep, the way he can accept he wants to. And when he pulls back, they meet each other’s eyes.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilery, more in-depth warnings: There is some rather rudimentary/not-wholly-accurate description of grayscale sexuality at the beginning of this fic. Additionally, the kink in this is both undernegotiated and kind of…misdirected? Both characters involved enjoy themselves/have a good time, but their motivations for having sex the way they choose to are somewhat influenced by their insecurities rather than pure, clean-cut sexual preference. Furthermore, I didn't tag for minor consent issues because I think you'll find that the overall tone of the sex is overwhelmingly consensual, and characters do pretty well with asking for verbal consent wherever they can. But please note that the nature of blindfolds is such that characters don't necessarily give explicit consent to each individual, minute sex act before it happens, because they've already consented to the overarching use of the blindfold and the limitations of awareness that can bring. If these warnings are the sort of things that make you feel bad, feel free to hit the back button! And also let me know if you read it and feel like I didn't tag something that really needed to be tagged, I'm always open to discussion about that.
> 
>  
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all noticed me tryna bring [this](https://twitter.com/JMackeyPG/status/1037377796211916800) energy to how Sid would feel being accused of _trying_ to give a blowjob.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and feel free to come talk to me on tumblr at [quickxotic](https://quickxotic.tumblr.com/)!


	2. Ready

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This little addendum basically wrote itself a couple days after I published the main work. Thought maybe I would keep it in the drawer, but eh, why not share if it exists? 
> 
> I’ll warn here for implied/referenced offscreen panic attacks mentioned in this tailpiece.

_Are You Ready?: All liquid must be under 100mL. Separate from baggage in one plastic bag per person. Václav Havel Airport Prague thanks you for your cooperation._

“Dude,” Nate groans, unceremoniously dropping his duffle onto the table to sift through it for toiletries. “Why do I never remember to do this beforehand?”

“It’d be a lot easier if you had an actual toiletry bag,” Sid points out.

Nate gives him a flat, baleful look. Then the hand he’s fishing around in his bag with reels in the catch; he pulls out a travel tube of toothpaste triumphantly. “Oh shit,” he adds, spotting a jar of hair gel that’s clearly too big to take through.

Sid pulls out his toiletry kit from his carry-on and transfers all of his perfectly-sized travel toiletries into a provided plastic bag in just the time it takes Nate to wiggle his hair gel out from the inside of a sneaker and toss it into the trash bin.

Sid’s process is fine-tuned by the long practice that comes with years of frequent air travel. Nate, on the other hand, still has a lot to learn. It takes him about five minutes longer than it should to finish pulling miscellaneous liquids from the shadowy depths of his luggage and loading them into the puny airport plastic bag, but at least it gives Sid time to remember that there’s still an old water bottle tucked into the side compartment of his own duffle. He opens the zipper and takes it out. It’s three-quarters empty, but the little bit of water that’s still sloshing around in there probably isn’t going to fly with airport security. He chucks it reluctantly into the same trash can that’s now home to Nate’s half-used hair gel.

Then he goes to re-zip the pocket, but a glint of fabric catches his eye from within. His sleeping mask.

Sid reaches for it. Touching it is almost like teleporting straight back to Claude’s bed—a warm body heavy on top of his, stubble scratching at his neck. Claude on him, around him.

 _I had sex with a guy_ , Sid thinks, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and waiting for the panic to set in.

It doesn’t come. It doesn’t come, even if the thought of fucking Claude is still so booming that Nate might look across at him and be able to read it aloud, just look at Sid and go, “You had sex with a guy.” Even if he walks through the body scanner at security and it comes up on the screen, like, _ALERT:_ _this dude had sex with a guy._

Because, well, he did. It’s like any other action Sid’s been able to take responsibility for and not feel ashamed.

He remembers the way it used to feel when he would get hard thinking about other guys, or at least back when he first started to consciously realize that was what was happening. Most of the time, he’d just wait until it went away. Watch a TV show or something until he felt normal again. Or on the occasion that he couldn’t ignore it, he’d close his eyes and do the deed, focus on the siren song of arousal until he spilled over with the frantic buzz of it. _Then_ came the immediate panic. The crash was always twice as devastating as the high—there was a lot of emptiness, unexplained hyperventilation. Nearly crying, sometimes. Everyone talked about the ‘afterglow’ of an orgasm. Sid knew of no such thing.

It took concerted effort and practice to learn how to get himself off without overthinking it during or after, especially if dudes were in the mental picture. Still, none of his less-than-satisfactory experiences with women made for a compelling argument that the real thing with a guy would be any better. Sid could drive himself crazy _imagining_ things, vivid pictures of what he wanted to do with _any_ given person, regardless of their body parts. But like he’d told Claude in the bar, reality had never lived up to fantasy.

Until now.

Until he had Claude’s voice yammering loud enough to block out all the doubt, to reach through the darkness and tug at Sid’s sleeves till he was headed in the right direction, away from all his inhibition. As it turns out, claiming a less performative, more genuine ownership of his own sexuality is not that scary. It’s wildly liberating, _relieving_. It’s catharsis so deep Sid might just tell someone about it instead of hoping they read it on him. _I had sex with a guy. I liked it, it was pretty incredible, yeah. I’m going to do it again._

And with women…Sid still doesn’t know. It seems premature to say that the uncomfortable, mediocre sex he’s always put himself through because it felt compulsory to being an adult male athlete means that it could _never_ be good with a girl. Especially now that he’s learning how vital communication is to the experience for everyone involved. He’d always known it would be, but knowing you should do something and actually living how much easier things are when you do it are separate matters. Claude had asked questions, given directions. Claude had thought it was hot instead of embarrassing. Claude had led by example in the way he’d been invested in Sid having a great time—Sid has a better idea of how to do that for him in return, now. He’s already gotten to try his hand at it a little, and it was a good start to build on.

Claude had made it easy on him, as little sense as that made. Despite years of hating each other, a bona fide era of mutual irritation—they’d worked out a lot of their tension and begun planting something else. Maybe it’d been an itch that only they could scratch for each other.

Sid balls up the sleeping mask in his palm and pulls it from the bag pocket. It’s a hell of a memory, but a terrible crutch. He wants to throw it out like bloody gauze from a wound, stitches pulled from mended skin. Like the blackout shades that hung in his room for the better part of a year.

Nate looks askance at Sid hovering over the trash can with it. “You need that, don’t you?” he asks, eyebrows furrowed. Admittedly, it’s not often that Sid gets rid of things.

 _Are You Ready?_ the sign asks.

Sid blinks over at Nate. He shrugs. “Nah, don't need it. Might as well lighten the load.”

Sex with Claude didn’t fix him. It took years of thinking himself out of a corner to be ready, to even be in a position where he could say yes to Claude. Sex with Claude was just the latest stepping stone in a line of hundreds Sid must’ve crossed before it.

And this is the last one. Sid takes one more look at the blindfold, thanks it for its service, and lets it fall into the wastebasket. It’s not to take home with him.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [quickxotic](quickxotic.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


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